Prime Mover

The ancient practices of the “Cure” in Ireland, celebrated the knowledge of the local healer. The healer understood the social and environmental impacts on the patient because, after all, they were part of the community. In modern medicine, the notion of the Prime Mover can mean that doctors may look for the one cause of an illness rather than the form or pattern within what is happening. Knowing the cause of an illness is, of course, important. However, looking for just one cause separates the person from the illness, discounting social, environmental and psychological factors. the notion of a Prime Mover being the only cause of illness, discards man’s own observations because they cannot be measured mathematically, rendering them useless in the scientific world. 

This separates the body and the spirit since the spirit cannot be analysed or measured. We then see the body as a machine with one of its parts not functioning correctly. In contrast to this, the local healer would place importance on the patient’s personal narrative and onsider other factors instead of focusing on just one Prime Mover. This piece deals with the separation of body and spirit, combining the abstracted body overlayed with texture both within these shapes and in the background to represent the complexities of the human body and the intersection of environmental and spiritual influences.